Monsieur Pécaud was repeating frantically, “Help me, Nicole, help me!”
I can’t repeat word for word what they said, as it’s twelve years since I listened to that poor, unhappy victim of her passion (or of her pride) and to that dishonest man. I can remember the sense of the words but not the words themselves. I certainly understood what it was all about. Monsieur Pécaud had falsified Monsieur’s documents to procure money for himself: he was playing the Stock Market. Madame had several times paid for the losses. The latest debt was huge; he had not dared to tell her about it before. Monsieur had found out about it and was going to dismiss him and take him to court.
“So what do you want me to do?” she asked him.
He replied, “You have proof of his infidelity. Offer him your silence in exchange for his. He’ll have to agree to that.”
“He has to agree!” she said, after a moment’s silence, in such a tone of voice … Ah! If, the jury, the lawyers, the judge, and the public could have heard that tone of voice when they were talking about the love Madame had for Monsieur! She hated him, Mademoiselle Monique! I had often thought so, but now I was sure. Now Mademoiselle will understand what must have happened in the car. Each wanted to outsmart the other, Madame offering her silence if he didn’t destroy Monsieur Pécaud, and Monsieur realizing that he had her cornered and that he could lay down his conditions for divorce; but Monsieur refused and, witty and sardonic as he was, he couldn’t help laughing at the idea that the wife he had discarded, older than him, plain and neglected by him, could be having an affair. But he didn’t laugh for long.
It must have been that laugh that sent her mad, poor thing! I can’t help but pity her. I think you can do anything to a woman: deceive her, beat her, and abandon her, but whereas a man might forgive being laughed at, a woman never would! Naturally you can mock a woman for her ignorance or the way she dresses and how she leads her life; you can mock her work as much as you like, but never her body, her face, or her lovemaking. Mademoiselle, I’ve always thought she sensed contempt in Monsieur’s manner toward her. Maybe even before they got married. Perhaps it went back to when they were both children: he was so handsome, spoiled by everyone, charming and brilliant, and she was so inconsequential and awkward. And after they were married! I’m certain he never laughed at her like a workman or a farmer might have done. He was a well-educated Gentleman. But a woman can sense what she’s not being told, and suffers for it. When they were alone in the evening, which didn’t happen very often, Monsieur would look at her with a bored smile. And she … well, I often thought, Mademoiselle, that if her eyes had been pistols, poor Monsieur would have been dead.
I think it’s quite wrong to make first cousins like them marry. They didn’t treat each other as man and wife, but felt the same about each other as they had when they were children, with Madame’s jealousy and Monsieur’s scorn. How, or rather why, they married, and what pushed them into something as serious as it can be joyful (as I hope it has been for Mademoiselle Monique) but more often than not turns out to be a disaster, we’ll neither of us ever know. No doubt it was money for Monsieur, and for Madame the triumph over her friends in at last catching her handsome cousin for keeps. The poor woman may have been guilty, but she certainly suffered.
Mademoiselle, when the Tragedy happened, I quickly realized that if nobody knew anything about Madame, she’d be acquitted; but she had a great deal to lose if ever the story of what really happened came out. All those women crying over her, calling her a Martyr, would have ripped her to pieces, just like the bitches women so often are to each other.
In Madame’s wardrobe, under the pink crêpe de Chine dresses, there was a bundle of letters from Monsieur Pécaud. I took them and hid them even before I went down to see Monsieur’s body. My first thought was to ask Madame what to do with them, but the doctors, the police, and the family wouldn’t let me near her. I wanted to keep them until after the trial. Everything was in those letters: the business with the money, their love affair—I hid them in a trunk, right at the bottom.
I thought that Madame would come home that evening, after the trial and acquittal, and that I would go to see her one day, when she had recovered. But then she fell ill, and the Countess took her to Switzerland, where she lived for three years before dying. As for Monsieur Pécaud, he got married almost at once. Poor Madame never had any luck. What was I to do, Mademoiselle? I carried on waiting. After all, the letters were safe in my house. I’d hoped to give them back to her when she was better, but she died in the sanatorium over there, alone and abandoned by everyone, apart from the Countess, who stayed with her until the end, as it was her duty to do, although I imagine that didn’t make poor Madame any happier.
When I heard about her death, I felt very uneasy. At first I thought I’d tear them up. Then I didn’t dare. After all, they’re not mine. It’s one thing to act as I did to help out but quite another to take on such a responsibility. I thought, “If ever one of the children needs money—and who knows what might happen—here’s the proof that Madame gave almost a hundred thousand francs to that Monsieur Pécaud, who’s now so rich … It’s all very delicate.” I would die if I thought I could have deprived any of the children of a single penny, I who loved them and have never deprived anyone of a penny, as God is my witness.
Mademoiselle was living in Strasbourg; otherwise I would have come to see her. But Mademoiselle Monique must understand: when you don’t have anyone to look after you and you’ve had a hard life, you have to be careful with your money. I had almost made up my mind to come last summer, but the train fares increased again. I don’t know what the world is coming to. Then I suddenly fell ill. I was taken to the hospital where I’m now waiting. The letters are in my trunk, with my things, in my married niece’s house in Nice. At first, I thought I’d write and ask her to send them to me here, but I know my niece. She and my nephew, who lives in Belfort, are furiously jealous of each other. She would never part from the trunk, as she would think it contained jewelry or valuable documents that I might be going to give to my nephew instead of to her. They’ll be very surprised when I die, as I spent everything I had on building my house in Souprosse, where I thought I’d end my days, and they’ll never agree about selling it. Well, I can’t worry about that! Money isn’t the most precious thing when you consider where I am now. They’ve got their lives ahead of them, but mine is over.
Mademoiselle Monique, I’m sending the key to the trunk with this letter. I could not have allowed my niece to rummage through it: she’d have read everything. Mademoiselle must go to Nice. I think she’ll decide to go now that she knows everything. She must tell them I sent her. The address is: Madame Garnier, 30 Rue de la République. She must ask for the trunk and open it. In the left-hand corner, under the woolens, she’ll find all her poor mother’s letters, neatly folded in my great-nephew’s christening box, which also contains a rosary blessed at Lourdes. It would make me very happy if Mademoiselle would send me the rosary. I’d like to have it with me when I die. The letters belong to Mademoiselle and she can do what she wants with them, but if she will allow her old servant to give her a bit of advice, she shouldn’t read them. There are some things in life it’s better not to know. The people who wrote them are dead, or will die one day, like us. Mademoiselle must let God judge them. That’s not for us to do.
Good-bye, Mademoiselle Monique. I hope your children are a source of great comfort to you.
Believe me, Mademoiselle, your most respectful and devoted servant,
Clémence Labouheyre
Le sortilège
[ THE SPELL ]
IT IS THE ELEMENT OF MYSTERY IN CHILDHOOD memories that gives them their power. The people and events of the past seem to have been disguised; you thought you knew what was happening but, years later, you realize your mistake. What seemed simple was in fact masked by secrets and shadows: what intrigued you then was just an everyday matter of inheritance or adultery. A child’s ignorance creates a world that is onl
y half-understood and partly concealed. Perhaps that is the reason it remains so vivid in the memory.
When I was eight, in the Ukrainian town where I was born, there lived a family I often used to visit with my young aunt. The father was a retired soldier. I have forgotten his rank and his name, but I can still visualize the house, the furniture, and the faces.
Their home was a long way from ours; we lived in the center of the town, and they were on the outskirts. Getting there was quite an excursion. I remember the old brown walls, tin roofs eaten away by rust, and countless drainpipes. The first time I went there it was a day in spring. The snow was melting, trickling away with a lively, joyful sound like the clinking of silver coins, surrounding the house with its shimmering sparkle as it flowed over the paving stones. I went inside, but then felt shy and hung back. A little girl came and took me by the hand. She was called Nina and later would become my friend. I stood in the hall while my aunt unwrapped the shawls and capes I wore against the cold. The little girl smiled as she looked at me; she had a wide mouth and dark eyes.
“Go and play in the nursery,” said my aunt, who was impatient to be alone with Nina’s older sister, Lola, so they could talk about their suitors.
Both my aunt and this young woman were twenty years old. My aunt was pretty, with soft skin and a trim figure, and no more intelligence than a flower. Nina’s sister was a tall, pale, thin girl, with a fine, sharp profile and such beautiful grass-green, almond-shaped eyes that one never wearied of gazing at them. Nina took me through the drawing room. I had never seen such an old house. There were many rooms, all of them small. To get from one to another you had to go up and down uneven, rickety brick steps. It was great fun. Signs of disorder, dilapidation, and neglect were everywhere, yet at the same time it was full of life and the most welcoming home I have ever been in. There were cobwebs and dust everywhere, wobbly little armchairs and ancient, overflowing trunks all over the place. The house smelled of strong tobacco, wet fur, and mushrooms, for it was damp. The walls in the nursery were gray and sweating.
“Don’t you worry about Nina’s health?” asked Mademoiselle, my nursemaid.
My friend’s mother shrugged her soft, plump shoulders.
“No. What can I do about it? The children are well. It’s God who sends us illness and health, my dear Mademoiselle.”
It was true that Nina was never ill. She ran barefoot over the cold floors and wet grass; she ate what she wanted; she went to bed after midnight; she was beautiful and strong. Sometimes I stayed in the house for a couple of nights. It might be raining and I would have caught cold going home in the evening, or the rising wind meant the coming of a storm: any excuse was good enough for my aunt and me, and I was always happy to pretend to have a sore throat or to feel tired when convenient. It was wonderful living there! I slept in Nina’s room; we would get up at dawn and run through the sleeping house; we hardly ever washed. When the grown-ups weren’t playing cards or sleeping, they were rather vaguely tidying up. Visitors would turn up throughout the day, for morning coffee, dinner, supper, tea after supper, at midnight, it didn’t matter when. Friends would sleep on sofas. Toward noon you might meet a tousle-headed boy wandering around the corridors in his nightshirt, who would introduce himself, “I’m one of your son’s friends.”
“Hello, make yourself at home,” would come the answer.
The table was never cleared; the food was heavy, but it was excellent. Some of the guests would be finishing their dessert as others were beginning their soup. Barefooted servant girls were constantly running between the dining room and the kitchen, bringing plates and taking them away. Then someone would exclaim, “I’d really like something sweet …”
“Nothing could be easier,” the mistress of the house would reply affably and, yet again, cakes would appear, then an omelette, a cup of hot chocolate, or some milk for the children. “Some more borscht?” And people started to eat again, as cigar smoke swirled around them, while in the same room a game of whist would start up and the sounds of a piano and violin would filter in from the next room.
“Don’t these people ever work?” asked Mademoiselle who, being foreign, had strange ideas about life.
But these Russians expected to get their daily bread from the czar, from their land, or from God. It was he who conferred good fortune and poverty, just as he conferred health and sickness. What was the point of worrying?
Sofia Andreïevna, my friend’s mother, seemed old to me; she could not have been more than forty, but she did not use makeup and did not wear a corset; she was a plump, faded blonde, soft and white as cream. When she pulled me toward her to greet me with a kiss, I breathed in a smell that reminded me of a high-class pâtisserie—orange flower water, vanilla, and sugar.
The father was very tall and thin but, perhaps because of his height, I don’t remember his face. I would have had to lean my head right back to see him properly, and I wasn’t interested enough in him for that. He lived a little remotely from his family, often having his meals taken to his room on a tray. If he happened to see me, he would stroke my cheek with his large cold hand. He had known Chekhov well; I don’t know why, but I remembered the grown-ups mentioning it one day. On his desk he had a box of letters from Chekhov. He had ordered them to be burned after his death. He was ill and knew he was going to die. That was the reason he had retired.
“Why burn Chekhov’s letters? They belong to posterity,” a young man once said in my hearing.
Looking at him grimly, the father said, “Trampling on a man’s soul with their big boots, that’s what they like doing. No, everything precious must be a secret.”
Friends, poor relations, elderly governesses—they all lived in this house. A student had come ten years before, as a tutor for the two boys, Lola and Nina’s brothers; he was supposed to stay for a month, but he had never left and was still a student. He didn’t have a room of his own; the old house, although enormous, was completely full. He had been sleeping for the last ten years on two chairs in the hall, and this surprised nobody.
The second place at the table, near the samovar and next to the mistress of the house, was reserved for a certain Klavdia Alexandrovna, one of Sofia Andreïevna’s childhood friends. She seemed to me a pale, ageless woman, but one day I saw her doing her hair—in the garden.
“These people,” said Mademoiselle, “sleep in the drawing room, eat in the bedroom, and get dressed on the terrace.”
On stormy days the rainwater was collected in tubs, and all the women of the house would wash their hair in the open air, then let it dry in the sun; that’s how I saw Klavdia Alexandrovna’s hair. It was like a golden cloak. I stood quite still admiring it. Her hair came down to her knees, and it shone in the light. Sofia Andreïevna was there, too, half-stretched out on a wicker chaise longue; she was wearing a lilac housecoat, which fell open to show her deep, creamy bosom. She caught the look on my face and started laughing. When she laughed, her chin quivered slightly and she looked nice—gentle and wise.
“You should have seen her twenty years ago,” she said, pointing at her friend. “She was so young; she had her hair hanging in two long golden plaits, and when she leaned her head back a little she could stand on them with the heels of her shoes.”
She sighed and turned toward Mademoiselle.
“Life is simpler than you think. When Klavdia and I were young, we both loved the same man and he was very … yes, he was very fond of her because of her hair and her lovely figure. But, you see, she didn’t have a dowry. What can you do when God refuses to make you rich? The young man’s parents would not hear of their marrying. There were quarrels, tears; his mother went to see Klavdia and said, “Make my son happy. Go away. Make a sacrifice.” She appealed to the finer feelings of the girl she had brought up in her own home. It was no use. So one night she called all three of us together, told us she was going to die, ordered her son to marry me, and told Klavdia to give up her love; but she made us both swear before God that we would never aband
on the orphaned girl, that she would live under our roof. And in the end that’s what happened. I married the young man. You know him: he’s my husband. We kept the promise we made to his dying mother and Klavdia found a home with us.”
I saw Klavdia Alexandrovna turn toward her friend. Tears were running down her face. She wiped them away and, in a voice breaking with emotion, said, “You are my benefactress, Sofia. You know that I’d give my life for you and your children. I’ve been so happy. What would have become of me without you? No home, no food, possibly even compelled to give lessons in order to survive! Ah! One day I’d like to return your kindness.”
Both of them were crying now, and Klavdia took Sofia’s hand and kissed it. Sofia gathered Klavdia into an embrace and traced the sign of the cross on her forehead. “May God watch over you! You help me so much keeping this house in order.”
It was true that, when cakes were brought to the table, Sofia Andreïevna would seize the silver knife and, with a deep sigh, plunge it into the middle of the thick crust; but then the effort seemed too great and she pushed the plate toward Klavdia, who finished what she had started and said to the guests, “Eat. You haven’t eaten anything yet. Please eat …”
And when people helped themselves, she added, “Bless you.” The same as when one sneezes. That’s what Russians do.
Klavdia Alexandrovna had other talents. She could read tarot cards. She knew all sorts of superstitions and strange rituals … On the eve of Twelfth Night she would slip mirrors under young girls’ pillows so that in their dreams they would see the man with whom they would fall in love. On the same evening she would shut herself away with Lola and my aunt, and they would throw burning wax into a basin of water: the wax would take on the shapes of rings, crowns, rubles, or crosses, and these would predict the future. Sometimes she would teach them how to do table-turning. A saucer was placed on a sheet of paper covered in letters, signs, and numbers; you touched the edge of the saucer with your fingertips and it would race across the table, forming words and sentences, sometimes skidding about so quickly you had to catch hold of it with both hands to stop it from falling off. Nina and I, the youngest of the children, would watch these séances, and I was never able to discover their secret. Klavdia would recite incantations that, she said, were for the dead, or to make thunder go away. I wondered how much she believed in them herself, but for us she was surrounded by an aura of mysterious charm. We respected her; children were drawn to her. At her age, and in her position as a poor relation dependent on others, she could have been despised; but, on the contrary, there was no fun without Klavdia.